Todd wrote:
>I do see reason to hope and believe that soon, mass-market browsers will
>parse documents that begin with <?xml version="1.0"?> . They'd better be
>well-formed, but apart from that, their elements and most of their grammar
>might come straight from the HTML DTD(s) of your choice.
Much as I may hope, I still doubt that that will be any time soon. However,
if it does, then it would be much better than a standards compliant HTML
browser, since it would by definition do x-html4.dtd already.
As some have said before, the ideal user agent needs to support:
XML + CSS + DOM + ECMAScript
Of course, not all the specs are there yet, but give it a few years and this
will emerge, I'm sure.
Wow. I have enough trouble convincing people that MARKUP is more important
than PRESENTATION. How hard will it be to explain that they can decide on
the DTD they want, and can even invent their own...? That won't need a gear
change, it'll need an engine change! Think about it: how many of the
upcoming XML DTDs do you think will miss the boat and end up resembling
PostScript more than the {ht|math}ML family?
>[snip: XML variant of HTML]
IOW, "let's have another go"...
The biggest problem I see is nothing to do with technology.
It's the way people think.
--
Ian Hickson
Typical conversation in a computer lab or in the ngs:
XX: "How do I put this piece of text in the 'Arial' font?"
ME: "CSS"
XX: "But, when I save-as-HTML in Word, it uses a FONT element!"